“It brings back memories,” Dolores McDowell said. “Our hearts go out to the parents of the child.”

Officials with the Durham County Department of Public Health are investigating the death of the 5-year-old, who attended Mount Zion Christian Academy on Fayetteville Street. Nine other children who went to the school are being treated with preventative antibiotics because they had been in close contact with the child, officials said.

The unidentified child presented no symptoms of the disease until Wednesday morning and died at Duke University Hospital. It could be several days before lab results confirm the case, although sometimes results are inconclusive.

Bacterial meningitis can be transmitted through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions, such as kissing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but it cannot be spread through casual contact or by breathing the air where a person with the disease has been.

Wake County Public Health Director Sue Lynn Ledford says children should be vaccinated as infants, in adolescence and then again before college.

She said parents should also be aware of the symptoms of meningitis, which include a sudden onset of a fever, headache or stiff neck. Those symptoms can be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, increased sensitivity to light and an altered mental status.